The Raging Bull of Orang

Massive. Stolid. Ungainly. Your mind might very well kick-off with these words when you see a rhino for the first time. I know my mind did, when I first saw the rhino in the city zoo so many years back. Seeing one in the wilds, in its natural surroundings is however, quite different. For an animal which is the second largest on land, smaller only to the elephant, it gives off an aura of invincibility, given its size coupled with its armour-like hide. It almost looks regal and peaceful given that being a herbivore, you are likely to see it munching grass and leaves.

There’s an element of incongruity too about the rhino’s appearance; if you see one from the rear, it seems as one friend remarked ‘to be wearing shorts’! Its skin has many layers and folds, the last fold ending just above its rear knees.

Once found extensively in India from across the Indus Valley in the west to Burma in the east, the Indian or Greater One-horned Rhinocerous survives today in its natural habitat only in Nepal, Bengal and Assam. Assam accounts for the most significant rhino population, its ecological status ‘endangered’ due to poaching. Rhinos are killed for their horns, which are bought and sold on the black market, and which are used by some cultures for ornamental or (largely pseudo-scientific) medicinal purposes.

Orang the smallest national park in Assam, is home to around 68 rhinos as well as other threatened mammals. Perhaps Orang’s most famous inhabitant was ‘Kaan-kata’ – a feared and cantankerous male rhino (also called a bull rhino) who roamed the grasslands of Orang for close to 4 decades. Kaan-kata which means ‘the one with the cut ear’, owed its name to the fact that poachers’ bullets had chipped some portion of his left ear when it was younger. It has been said that Kaan-kata had survived other attempts by poachers since that fateful incident.

Owing to these unpleasant human encounters, Kaan-kata had developed a marked testiness towards people, charging at sight. Such was his sway that both forest staff and poachers were very wary of coming close to Orang’s most famous denizen, not daring to cross its path.

Lording over the grasslands of Orang in its lifetime, Kaan-kata breathed his last in Feb this year in his beloved and only home. The forest staff found Kaan-kata’s lifeless body in the morning of 16^th Feb at a spot, roughly at the centre of the park. The body bore no external injury and the horn was intact too. Post mortem confirmed that the aging patriarch had succumbed to the ultimate malady – old age.

In death, Kaan-kata elicited wistful reminiscences from local forest staff over his intrepid nature and post-16^th Feb I suspect, his exploits will become a part of Orang legend. Like the time that Kaan-kata charged at and attacked the vehicle of a divisional forest official (pretty much the top officer in a forest division) 3 years back. Poachers too, were at the receiving end as one forest official has said, “A poacher who was arrested a few years back had revealed during interrogation that Kaankata had chased him along with a few others for more than 2km.” In fact, Kaan-kata’s trepidations had spooked poachers to such an extent that they had stopped entering into Orang at daytime being fearful of Kaan-kata.

Kaan-Kata at his final resting place: At last, angry no more

The way I see it, Kaan-kata fought not only for himself but for the right of all animals everywhere to rid themselves of the yokel of human greed and interference. We need more Kaan-katas.

Garden State: Exploring the Infinite Abyss…

Garden State opens with a dream sequence of Zach Braff in a plane evidently about to crash. The co-passengers are panic-stricken, stuff inside the plane are colliding against other stuff, Zach is strangely detached and a sloka to Lord Ganesh “Vakratunda Mahakaaya Vakratunda Mahakaaya….”, is unhurriedly playing in the background. In a way, the sloka beseeching the Lord to remove all obstacles from one’s chosen path, is evocative of how all of us feel at some points of our lives.

Garden State celebrates this……celebrates the breathlessness, the bewilderment, the numbness that life sometimes turn into, with style and oh, with so much of coolness. Zach who makes his directorial debut with this, carries the persona of Andrew ‘Large’ Largeman with a loose-bodied and foppish grace as he ascends from his medication-induced haze onto a re-discovery of his life.

Large returns to his home in New Jersey after nine years for his mother’s funeral and the story unfolds. The Oz-ian landscape he returns to is home to an assortment of quaint characters with quirky interests – a grave-digger friend into collecting play cards, an ex-classmate who’s a cop now but you are left wondering about his supposed sanity for such a job, another is one of those guys who makes a lame but financially rewarding invention and then relapses into bored nothingness. Most of the characters seem to mirror Large’s own mental frame – superficial coolness masking a sense of suffering and loss, just content to be in “the waiting line”. Natalie Portman (Sam) is the odd one in the milieu, a character as free-spirited and unconventional as the foam helmet she wears while traveling and in work.

In the Harlequinade that Garden State explores, Zach is very much a modern-day Pierrot, naïve, unsure and with a sensitivity which is sometimes dorky. The movie joins Large, Sam and his high school buddy Mark (Peter Sarsgaard) on a journey which is replete with scenes that strike a fine balance between simplicity and poignancy, all echoing the sentiment - “I’m still waiting for my time”.

At times though, Garden State becomes meandering with the denouement itself very much at odds with the easy, un-contrived flow that preceded the events before. I have a sneaking suspicion too, that the overt coolness of the movie will wear off as one moves on with his life and gets further and further away, from the ‘nervous twenties’.

It would be fair however, to say that I loved Large, his quirks, the characters he came across, Sam’s effervescence and unusual pantomimes and the ‘geological phenomenon’. Chances are, that you will too.

If you like Garden State, it’s a cinch that you will simply love its soundtrack. Garden State received the Academy Award for Best Movie Soundtrack in 2004 – for a collection of songs which could be in your I-pod favourite songs’ playlist. But it is a collection which Zach compiled specifically for the film and he enclosed the soundtrack CD along with every copy of the film script he sent to producers.

The songs work wonderfully at a level where they unobtrusively but very eloquently underline the emotions which the film seeks to create. The soundtrack employs a mix of indie-rock, techno, blues that explore the eternal themes of youthful angst and loss. The Shins with their twin songs ‘Caring is creepy’ and ‘New Slang’ churn out a curious blend of  disillusionment and resonance, which is further expounded by Nick Drake’s brilliant ‘One of these things first’. Coldplay’s hummable ‘Don’t panic’ introduces a playful hopefulness – “'Cos yeah, everybody here's got somebody to lean on”. The unusual ‘Waiting line’ by Zero 7and Frou Frou’s ‘Let go’ are languid portrayals of an Elliot Smith-like resignation and muddled acceptance of life’s stuff. Zach’s ex-girlfriend Bonnie Somerville’s ‘Winding road’ and Cary Brother’s ‘Blue eyes’ are bluesy-country numbers full of melody and ‘Blue eyes’ specially has a resounding quality that fills up your senses. Colin Hay’s ‘I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You’ rings easy with Hay’s sonorous voice.

The heartfelt tone of ‘The Only Living Boy In New York’ by Simon & Garfunkel sounds great especially when it is played at that point in the movie where the 3 main characters come up to the edge. There are additional covers by Thievery Corporation (‘Lebanese blond’) and Iron & Wine (‘Such great heights’ of the Postal Service original) which work well if not great, with the rest. My personal favourite is Remy Zero’s ‘Fair’ for its haunting melody and the soulful refrain.

Simply speaking, this compilation works even without the film – an eclectic bits-and-pieces that come together as a mellow whole. In the movie, Natalie Portman offers Zach Braf her headphones and tells him that the song he is about to listen to (The Shin’s ‘New Slang’) will "change his life". No stupid line this cos if you let it, the songs in the album will speak to you – truly and deeply.